‘Where do you think he went?’ she asked.
‘Beyond Beirut? Naturally, I have no idea.’
She sat back and laid her phone on the table deliberately. ‘I’d like that drink now,’ she said.
Vigo poured the Pimms, holding back the mint leaves and fruit in the jug with a silver spoon.
‘What would you do if you were in our position?’ she asked quietly. ‘We have two or three main suspects who are rich and mobile. They plan months, maybe years ahead and have a very sophisticated understanding of the way we work. What would you do? Where would you go?’
‘There are two options, clearly. You can make it very difficult for them to move by releasing their photographs and all the information you have on them. But that may not deter anything planned to happen this week. So I would be inclined to risk revealing nothing whatsoever and hope to trace them. Sammi Loz probably thinks we believe him dead, and neither Youssef or Jamil Rahe know you’re onto them. So I would use that slight advantage.’
‘How?’
He breathed deeply and looked away to a column of gnats dancing in the sunlight. A blackbird sang out some way off. ‘Well, there’s no obvious way. But if Youssef is unaware that we’re onto him, Jamil also thinks he’s safe. You say you believe Jamil is a major figure in the Heathrow plot. I suggest you find him and start by monitoring his phone. If an attack of some kind is expected, then Jamil will be part of it. From what you say, he’s murdered before – his own people. Then there is the mosque. You say Jamil made contact with this attendant from Heathrow at the mosque. I take it you’re referring to the Cable Road mosque in Belsize Park, the one attended by Youssef Rahe and which is now believed to be under the influence of Sheik Abu Muhsana?’
Herrick nodded.
Vigo talked on, unaffected by Harland’s hostility, and began to adopt the professorial manner he had used with Southern Group Three back in the Bunker. At length, even Harland was listening with grudging nods. They discussed ways of prodding Jamil to make contact. He added that this should all happen before the raids on the continent, so that it appeared to come out of the blue, but would be sufficiently menacing for Jamil to break cover. ‘These men are not without fear,’ he said. ‘As Seneca said, “Fear always recoils on those who seek to inspire it; no one who is feared is unafraid himself”. ’
‘Let’s keep to the point,’ said Harland.
‘I find Seneca is always to the point. It’s a consolation that we experience nothing in the way of anger, failure, disappointment and sheer bad luck that has not been explored two thousand years ago.’
‘I can see why you’re reading him,’ said Harland. ‘I think it’s highly unlikely the Chief will want anything more to do with you, other than arranging for you to be tried.’
‘We shall see,’ he said, studying Isis. ‘After all, we’ve all been duped and made to look fools, have we not? Now, I know Bobby that you and I have never seen eye to eye; that we have a history, as my wife says. But I would suggest that we are the best people to be working on this. I know Youssef and Jamil Rahe, and you two both know Sammi Loz. We’re the natural front line – the only front line. And with your contacts in Mossad, we should make an admirable team.’
Harland flinched enough for Herrick to notice. ‘I agree with Harland,’ she said. ‘It’s not going to happen.’
‘Well, give it some thought overnight. If I don’t hear from you or the Chief tomorrow I will understand.’
Herrick and Harland rose.
‘And please, no more threats. You know as well as I do they can’t put me on trial. Any more talk of this nature and I will make life extremely difficult for this government and several past governments. Tell Teckman that. He knows I mean it.’
‘I suppose that’s how you wrapped your coils around Spelling,’ said Harland.
Vigo got up heavily and made towards a bed of hostas. ‘I will expect to hear from you tomorrow.’
‘One other thing,’ Herrick called after him. ‘I want you to admit that you had my house searched by Marenglen’s men.’
Vigo stopped in his tracks. ‘We wanted to know what you had got, Isis. We knew you weren’t just looking at the computer. I think you’ll find the Deputy Director was also aware of the need to find out. You could say it was an official operation. ’
‘What, with armed Albanian pimps?’
‘Needs must,’ said Vigo, turning back to his hostas.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
They were in Holland Park Avenue again. Herrick snapped the phone shut after talking to one of the Chief’s two assistants.
‘He’s going to call me later,’ she said to Harland. ‘They don’t know when. Look, we don’t want to be in a restaurant when he rings. Would you mind if I made dinner at my place? I’ve got a sort of garden – we can eat outside.’
Harland shrugged pleasantly and they went to a shop nearby to buy wine and some rump steak.
‘Vigo is such a complete and utter bastard,’ she said as they left the shop. ‘I mean, what’s his game? What does he want?’
‘Influence,’ said Harland, flagging down a cab. ‘He likes pulling the strings without anyone seeing it’s him. He likes the aura of power and he wants acceptance – the clubs, shooting parties, the best stretches on the Tweed; all that bollocks. In one way he’s just an unrequited snob, both socially and intellectually.’
‘But he is sharp,’ she said, as they climbed into the cab.
‘Oh yes, very, but somehow that makes him more disappointed. All that superior talent and where is he now? Desperate to have some minor role in the final stages of this operation.’
‘You think Teckman will go for it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, he expected him to make the offer of help. He reads Vigo like a newspaper headline because Vigo wants everything that the Chief has acquired effortlessly. Teckman understands his longings.’
They were silent for the remainder of the journey and watched London slide by, bathed in a soft, crepuscular light.
When they arrived, Herrick went to change and put Harland to work on her terrace, clearing dead leaves and wiping down the chairs and table.
The garden was a triumph of neglect. Where a more careful gardener would have tidied and pruned and scraped away at the ground, Herrick had simply bought a collection of shrubs, vines and climbing roses one afternoon five years before, planted them and left them to their own devices, with the result that the roses had spread over the bushes and reached into two apple trees next door, closing off the garden to inspection from neighbouring houses.
Her attitude to cooking was similarly uncomplicated. As Harland drank a glass of wine outside, he watched her through the kitchen window as she threw together a salad, then briskly dealt with the steak and mushrooms. She had it all ready in under twenty minutes and brought it out to him.
‘Have you heard from your father?’ he asked.
‘Yesterday. We’re planning a trip when this is over.’ She tore off the end of the baguette and began to work at the steak. ‘Actually, I can hardly wait. You know they bloody well fired me this morning. I was pushed out of the building by a creature called Cecil.’
‘But you were seen to be right – vindication is rare in your job.’
‘I haven’t even been officially reinstated yet.’
‘How’s his wrist?’
‘Just sprained. He was lucky. It was his right hand, so he wouldn’t have been able to paint and that would have killed him.’
‘You’re pretty close to the old man,’ he said.
She picked up her glass and thought about it. ‘Yes and no. Proximate in the sense that we have led our lives together without my mother for so long – yes; intimate in the sense that I know what’s going on with him and he with me – no.’
‘You rub along.’
